Jason Woods is an organizer and national spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United. The labor union recently hit a milestone with 600 coffee shops organized across the United States, but baristas are still struggling with low pay and sub-par working conditions—all while CEO Brian Niccol made $96 million in his first few months on the job. Woods sat down with Current Affairs associate editor Alex Skopic and Common Dreams journalist Stephen Prager to discuss the union’s fight for fair wages. 

Alex Skopic

So just to start, for anybody out there who might not know much or anything about the Starbucks union, how did this get started? Why are Starbucks workers trying to unionize?

Jason Woods

Starbucks Workers United started in about 2021 in Buffalo, New York. Those brave souls led the way for over 600 stores now to be unionized and to have protections against upper management, against any kind of issues that may arise in the workplace—to know that baristas have rights as much as any other worker. Since 2021 we went from one brave set of baristas up in Buffalo to almost 637, I want to say now at the time of recording—about 637 stores—and we’re rapidly growing. And of course, we’re organizing because we deserve to be able to be protected. To be able to have better wages and working conditions for our baristas, and this is the same as any other kind of work. And we feel like we deserve that. That’s kind of the long and short of it all. We deserve better.

Skopic

Yes, absolutely. I follow your press releases and social media, and I swear, every two or three days I get an alert that another Starbucks is unionized. I know maybe seven or eight months ago it was in the 500s, and now it’s 637. Incredible.

Woods

Yes, we’re rapidly growing. And it just goes to show how baristas are just waking up to the many things that not just Starbucks, but almost every corporation, is doing that are anti-worker and anti-labor. They make all of this money—they make so much money, and yet they refuse to pay us what we’re worth. And ultimately, that’s what it is. We’re just trying to be recognized for the worth that we have. Because in any kind of coffee shop, people come in to grab coffee and to be able to have a space to enjoy, to relax, or to work. And what Starbucks is doing is very anti-consumer as well, just with the many changes that they made in trying to force us to do many things, like have faster drive-through times. Most stores—a lot of them—are drive-through, and they’re trying to make everything as quick as possible. And there’s a certain point where “quick” doesn’t equal fast, as in, quick doesn’t mean that the drink would be made the way that you expect it to be. And we are all being rushed. We are all being treated just so badly by our management.

Skopic

I go into a Starbucks sometimes, and I see they’ve got all these wild seasonal drinks. They’ve got three different colors, and they’ve got marshmallows, and they’ve got a swirl of God knows what. And they expect the workers to put those together in, what, like a minute?

Woods

Less than a minute. Speaking of drive-through times, if I remember correctly, right now they want to have everything be done in under a minute, like around 45-50 seconds, while trying to maintain something like mobile orders, cafe orders, or delivery orders. There are so many ways that you can grab a Starbucks drink now that it just puts so much pressure on us to have to get it done right, to where some Karen won’t be like, oh my god, I waited like two minutes for a drink—when she will say 20—but a minute is so long for this drink. It’s these things that Starbucks is doing that are tarnishing our relationship with the customers that they want us to have connections with so badly. They’re forcing disingenuous connections with these people, when we were doing fine having connections with people. Customer connections are one of the main cruxes anyway, because people rely on us to get through the day. People rely on baristas to just get their day started, end their day, or have a little treat in the middle. And the fact that Starbucks is doing so many things that tarnish that relationship we’ve had with our customers—it’s abysmal. It’s asinine.

Skopic

What is the average pay for a barista these days?

Woods

On paper, they claim that the average barista wage is about $19, but in reality, they take into account places like LA, Seattle, New York—places where the cost of living and their minimum wage are substantially higher than places like here in New Orleans. Hell, the minimum wage in Louisiana is still $7.25, and the minimum wage for Starbucks is $15. And you’d think that $15 is a decent wage for someone making coffee, but at the rate things are going with inflation and with tariffs, everything going on right now, $15 is not enough for any barista or any person to live on, especially if they’re trying to have a one- or two-bedroom apartment by themselves. They either have to have a partner or a roommate; they have to have some kind of financial help. Many of us are doing two to three jobs to make ends meet while still being here. And people will say, if you don’t like it, if you think you’re not getting paid enough, leave. But what does that do for the future baristas that come through those doors? For anybody else who’s trying to find a job with Starbucks, unionizing is the only way to be able to ensure that any barista—current, former, and future—will be able to secure a decent living wage, or at least get closer to that.

Skopic

Yes, and I remember the Fight for $15. That’s always been the slogan. But that started in [2012,] and $15 no longer goes as far as it used to.

Woods

If I remember correctly, to afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment, you now have to make at least $24 to $25 an hour—minimum. And that’s assuming nine-to-five, 40 hours a week to be able to have enough to reach these things where it’s like, you have 30 percent for needs, 30 percent for wants, and 10 percent for savings. Trying to follow those rules costs almost $25 an hour, and maybe the shift supervisors are making that much. But even then, taking out taxes and other things—I’m going to be real, the wage that they claim to have for the average barista, they include benefits. Granted, Starbucks has decent benefits, but including benefits as a part of the pay is not right, because that’s not part of your take-home pay.

Skopic

So that means they’re taking the value of your health insurance, and they’re considering that wages?

Woods

Basically they’re taking the value of health insurance, therapy, maybe stuff like Spotify, our ASU—our school tuition—and not even reimbursement. Their tuition program, where they’re paying for tuition, they’re taking the value of all of that, and for people who don’t even use those things, it’s disingenuous to claim that we’re all making this much when they’re taking that value into account.

Stephen Prager

And it starts to feel even more stark. There was a recent AFL-CIO report showing that the new CEO of Starbucks makes 6,666 times what the average worker at Starbucks makes, and he has a yearly salary of $98 million.

Woods

First of all, who needs $98 million per year? There’s no one in their right mind who needs that much money to live. And it’s almost cartoonish. It’s almost cartoonish how evil that number is. Almost 7,000 times the amount of the wage of an average barista, which they claim is $19, but here it’s like $15. The even crazier part about all of that is the average CEO makes maybe about 400 to 1,200 [times] more. Why is it that Brian Niccol is making almost 10 times that alone on top of his huge sign-on bonus from taking him from Chipotle, which I think was already about $113 million? At me if I’m wrong, but I want to say it’s about $113 million to sign on, on top of the fact that he made almost $98 million within four months, his first four months as CEO. From about late August or early September to about January 2025, that’s how much he made.

Skopic

And when you think about what that means in terms of our relations as people, when you say a couple of months of this guy’s life is worth more than most people’s entire lives, it just becomes disgusting.

Woods

It’s very disgusting, and that’s why I’ve been fighting for a contract. That’s why I’ve been fighting for a contract for us to be able to secure better wages and protections and healthcare. And every single thing that a lot of other unions have in their contracts, we want. We want to be able to make sure that every barista that joins our union can feel secure in knowing that those things are there and that they don’t have to worry about having their job over their head every single moment.

Skopic

And you mentioned the dress code. I want to talk a little about that because I’ve seen a lot of stories about how the company has really weaponized the dress code as a way to stop the union. And I see they have done it in a frankly racist way. I’ve seen stories of Palestinian and Arab folks who have been told they can’t have a keffiyeh or a headscarf. I’ve seen stories of people with certain hairstyles told they can’t have that. Have you been dealing with that?

Woods

Yes. So funny enough, whenever they first introduced a new dress code, it was in writing that keffiyehs, durags, scarves—any kind of headwear that has been traditionally used for people of color—have been basically told, nope, can’t wear them. And that prompted so much backlash because there are so many people, especially Black people who have textured hair, who cannot put our hair into protective styles or use a durag or the other forms of headwear that we need to be able to protect our hair from the environment, from the elements. There’s so much backlash that they walked it back about two or three days later. In general, it’s just been so much in terms of—I’m trying to think of the right words to say this. It has been done in a very racialized and weaponized way, and the same thing for many other parts of the dress coding that are directly harming our trans and our queer baristas as well. Back then, we had a more freeing and less restrictive dress code that allowed our trans, nonbinary, and queer baristas to dress as they see themselves to be able to be comfortable in their own skin. And Starbucks has promoted that we’ve been very queer, very liberal, and very, dare I say, woke for so long. And this feels like a truly mask-off moment.

Skopic

Because it’s not really about the hair, is it? Or the scarf, or whatever it is. It’s about power.

Woods

It is about power. And using these ways to basically strip us of our individuality, to try to align us with being complicit and just conforming like that. It feels like it gives rise to a greater slide into conservatism that I’ve noticed that many companies have been subject to ever since the Trump administration started, like removing a lot of the DEI markings because of executive orders. Removing anything trans, to the point where a lot of websites that were representing trans people on the government side have been just wiped off the face of the Earth.

Skopic

But you also say they walked some of it back because of backlash, which just goes to show they ultimately are scared of the people.

Woods

Oh, definitely. And I wanted to kind of circle back about money, because if I remember correctly, I’ve seen some articles about calls that say sales have been declining, and I feel like that has been in no small part due to the efforts that a lot of allies, a lot of other customers, and just normal people have been doing to show that they stand with Starbucks workers. And I’m so proud to be part of a union where we can rely on our allies and rely on customers who see us as human. They actually see us as human and not as a coffee machine or a walking thing to just throw coffee at if we have no freaking food or something. It feels good that there are some people who are actually empathetic to us. And it warms my heart that there are people like that.

Skopic

I also want to get into what people can do to help. You and I, a little earlier today, did a little bit of organizing. We were down at the Starbucks on Poydras Street, and we did what you call a sip-in. You’ve got sip-ins with a “p,” and you’ve got sit-ins with a “t.” So what’s a sip-in, and what’s a sit-in? How do they work?

Woods

Sit-ins with a “t” are the same kind of sit-ins that have been traditionally done, even with Martin Luther King Jr. back in the ’60s during the civil rights movement. These sip-ins are just casual ways of being able to support union stores, or sometimes not-yet-union stores. You go into a Starbucks and order something quick and easy, like an iced tea or a coffee.

Skopic

I think I just got a plain black coffee.

Woods

Plain black coffee. Or even better yet, just grab something from the ready-to-eat area. And you go up to the barista and say, hey, I want to order this or this. When you get a total and they ask you for your name, you say “union strong,” or something along those lines, to show that you are a union supporter. A lot of times, once they hear that you’re a union supporter, a sigh of relief comes to some of them. But there are also stores that have been subject to immense amounts of union busting. And as a result of that immense amount of union busting, there’s so much turnover, there’s so much fear, so much disinformation, that we have to remember that is a thing and show them that, no, you matter, and that you do have rights. It just kind of gives them remembrance, even with their, I’ll say, tyrannical store manager or whatnot, and gives them confidence to know that they can talk about these issues on the floor and that it is protected, that it is legal to talk about being in a union, and you should feel proud to be in a union that is fighting so hard to protect you.

Prager

So how do you decide what stores to do a sip-in at? Do you specifically go for ones that are trying to organize and have faced intimidation?

Woods

Yes, a little bit of that. And there are some times when there are stores, like I said, that have gone cold, where, because of the immense amount of backlash that they got from unionizing or just the amount of turnover from either people getting fired or people moving on to other things, they just need a little bit of a reminder. There are ways that we do target which stores that we can go to. This one in particular is because we just have so many people who are like-minded that we were able to organize something and have them able to be there with us.

We also had a sip-in a month ago, which turned a little hostile because of the union busting happening right up in our faces—the, dare I say, illegal union busting happened right in our faces. And that caused the cops to be called, and we were kicked out, even though we were all following the rules. We have to pay for our things for us to use the facilities. All we did was just sit down, take up the space, and talk about cool union stuff. Just be social. Just show that we’re there. And there’s so much intimidation, so much hostility, the minute that the manager found out that it was that. It’s just something that I feel people would do as a form of just small bits of organizing. And doing the sit-ins is part of our bigger actions that we’re trying to orchestrate to get Starbucks to come back to the bargaining table. There will be more escalations happening until Starbucks can get back to the bargaining table.

Skopic

You’ve been organizing out in Baton Rouge. You’ve been organizing here in New Orleans. And I know Starbucks Workers United has been across the South. Would you say that organizing in the South is a little bit of a different ball game, compared to the North?

Woods

Yes. So, a current example, going back to that first sip-in we had last month, we had what was called the Justice Journey. We were fighting for immigrants’ rights and for all the rights of workers, and that was to show that the rights of immigrants and the rights of workers are one and the same. Part of that sip-in was just the same thing. We’re all kind of in a similar boat. We were all like-minded people, all union people, all union allies that were just in the same spot. And we were like, there’s a place that we can go to just show that unions are important, that unions are indeed  a thing that we need to protect ourselves from tyrannical governments and hostile environments and sometimes hostile management. So, I don’t know if I answered the question fully, but that’s a long-winded way of saying that.

Skopic

It makes sense to me.

Woods

But organizing in the South has been a different ballpark because of just the extreme amounts of disinformation that have been disseminated just across all media down here. And a lot of it also has to do with the South’s history in general of being less worker-friendly, being more anti-labor, and just anti-liberal mindsets as well. So organizing in such a red area is harsh. It’s hard. There have been baristas who I know personally who’ve been doxxed due to union work, who have been put in danger because of union work here in the South. And it just breaks my heart, because why is it that us trying to care for people, us trying to make sure that we can protect our baristas, our shift supervisors, the people who make you coffee every day—why is it that protecting them is causing you such harm that you have to give harm to us? Why is it that organizing, trying to stand up for the rights of everybody, of other people—why is it such a cardinal sin to care for people?

Skopic

Absolutely. And with that in mind, that’s one of the things that really annoys me when I’m looking at conversations about this on the internet—the usual suspects, Twitter or Facebook. There’s a lot of people out there who, and some are conservatives and also some leftists—or some people who think they’re leftists—who reckon that the Starbucks union battle and baristas’ work are not as legit as factory work or the auto workers. They really look down on it and say it’s not productive labor, things like that. So what do you say to those people?

Woods

It’s funny that you say that our labor isn’t productive labor. If it weren’t for our labor, you wouldn’t have enough energy to do your labor. So why is it that you feel like your labor is more important than our labor, when our labor is the reason that you can do your labor? Our labor is the reason that you can even get up in the morning to even think about doing your labor. I’ll even expand on that. Why is it that so many people look down upon those who are making a living or trying to make a paycheck waiting tables, making food, making coffee, or doing other services, like even housekeeping? Why is it that whenever we try to organize so we can actually be paid what we’re worth, they want to come in and try to strike us down, thinking that we’re not worth it because we’re not productive or that we’re unskilled? But let me tell you this: no labor is unskilled. There are people that I know that are in office right now that wouldn’t even be able to stand five minutes at a very busy drive-through store, being attacked from all sides, talking about getting one coffee here while you’re trying to take an order on the drive-through while making a drink in the other hand.

Skopic

I always think about the CEOs of these companies, like Starbucks or Walmart. I’d like to see them try to survive a shift.

Woods

I’d love to see them try to go undercover one day.

Prager

Does he know how to make a cup of coffee himself? Like just for himself.

Woods

Many of our district managers don’t even know how to make a cup of coffee. I remember a time when we maybe had a group of managers show up, and they were actively heckling one manager for not knowing how to make a coffee. And it was the middle of what we call peak season, so the busiest part of the day. Why is it that they were heckling them? Being in the way, mind you. They’re in the way of doing our work. And because of that, we had to work around that, while they’re just saying, you don’t know how to make a drink, and you didn’t know how to build the standard. What? Honestly, it’s just sad to see that the people who don’t know the means of production of how to make the coffee or even how to serve the customers that they make money off every day. They don’t know how to run three shifts all at once. They don’t know how to handle it if someone calls out and we’re short-staffed. And yet they want to use AI to make orders for us. They want to use algorithms to deploy our plays. It’s inhumane. It’s anti-worker, anti-labor.

Skopic

Lastly, for anybody out there who either works at a Starbucks right now and is thinking of unionizing, or who doesn’t work at one but wants to support the union efforts, what can folks do to lend a hand on this?

Woods

I think right now, the simplest thing you can do is talk to baristas about unionizing, about the positives that it could be. And if there’s any negative pushback to that, you can tell them about the disinformation. Information is power. Knowledge is power. There are also more things you can do to support us. If you want to support us financially, we do have a merch store, unioncoffeegear.com. All union-made merch—shirts, tumblers, hats, and buttons. You name it. And they’re all going to future funding for our fellow baristas, in case of things like strikes or mutual aid or along those lines. And we also have a no-contract, no-coffee pledge that we are urging people to sign. So when the time comes that we have to strike, if it has to happen, we will have the support that we need for people to not cross the picket line when that happens, like customer organizations. Anybody who supports workers, anybody who supports labor, anybody who supports a living wage. They support people living and being able to have pride in their work without having to worry about, am I going to have this job tomorrow? All of you should be able to sign this and to support us. I will also, personally, try to expand my reach by supporting more causes as well, being able to join more picket lines of other unions and show solidarity with those unions and with these causes that are for not only baristas but for people to be free.

Skopic

All right. Well, you heard the man. Let’s go to those websites. Let’s talk to your baristas. Let’s get this done. So Jason, thank you so much for coming on. We’ll talk to you soon.

Woods

There is one more thing I’d like to say. We want Starbucks to come back to the bargaining table in good faith. We want to finish this contract, and we needed this finished yesterday. We need to get this contract finished immediately.

Transcript edited by Patrick Farnsworth.